


for all the salt in the sea

by vivacissimo



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Forgiveness, Homecoming, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:54:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28177965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vivacissimo/pseuds/vivacissimo
Summary: Even through the darkest of storms, sea-hardened Lord Admiral Alyn Oakenfist prides himself on always finding his way home. With the Red Kraken defeated and Prince Viserys safely returned, Alyn sets his sights on Driftmark. Finding a way back into the heart of his family, however, proves a more delicate task.
Relationships: Baela Targaryen/Alyn Velaryon
Comments: 8
Kudos: 10





	1. first you borrow

**Author's Note:**

> just an exploratory two-parter that ends tragic but first, a slice of happiness. everyone gets one

In King’s Landing, Aegon’s chambers become the chambers of all his siblings - Baela and Rhaena and Viserys most of all, Prince Daemon’s four children strewn across the settee, the bed, the yak fur rug gifted by some ambassador of Ghiscar. It is unsettling how their chests all rise and fall in rhythm with one another, but they are together when they thought they never would be again, so Alyn only closes the door behind him and seeks out his own bed.

A bed on land is a strange thing after so long aboard his ship and he cannot say that he sleeps well in the capitol. The sea is forever his mistress, and when he remains on her for too long, he loses most of his senses. Most sailors experience this, when the foam of the ocean and a bright sun in the sky feel more of a home than any four walls, and the only cure for such drifting is an anchor. 

He named his ship for his anchor: _The Lady Baela_ , his dangerously beautiful wife who had more in common with a volcano than a proper lady. She is mother to his perfect little girl Laena, who coos at him with perfect pink lips and gazes endlessly around with her eyes made of lilacs—Baela’s eyes.

Daenaera climbs up onto his lap while he’s cradling Laena and pulls at his sea-grown beard as if it’s the most entertaining thing she’s seen in ages. While he cradles them both, he is struck by the queer thought that in a world where his niece wasn’t to be Queen of all Seven Kingdoms these two might have been as sisters. “Will you visit me, uncle?” she asks, her face round with the loveliness of courtly innocence, and he throws her in the air until she shrieks.

They sail for Driftmark after a week. “I will return soon,” he promises the boy King, which Aegon agrees to enthusiastically, but it is plain to see that an immeasurable weight has been lifted from him already. The return of Viserys may only cure one of a hundred melancholies but Alyn is glad to see it gone, for there has been so little joy in this family that he is beginning to see himself a part of.

“She fusses from the rocking,” Baela tells him distractedly while he sails them home, calming Laena who cries loudly in her arms. Finally she simply frees a breast and latches the child onto it, allowing her to drink until the babe smacks her lips in satisfaction and sleeps. It is the first time Alyn has seen Baela nurse, and for a moment he forgets everything he knows about sailing and winds.

When they arrive, Alyn goes to bathe while Baela puts Laena to bed. He has dinner in their chambers and awaits her, but she does not come so eventually he seeks her out. When he walks into the nursery, his wife is stretched out on the padded floor, and Laena is blissfully just the same in her crib. For a time Alyn only observes, wondering if he should leave them as is, mother and daughter who have had moons to become closer than he currently is to either of them. That is what a good husband would do.

He carries Baela to their bed. He has never claimed to be a good husband, and he needs her in his arms to ground him once more. For his mind remains tossing between the crests of two waves.

When he lays her down beneath the blankets and strips to his smallclothes, wrapping his arms around her and trapping her to his body, he releases an exhale so loud he’s worried it may have woken her. Thankfully Baela sleeps like the dead, and Alyn buries his nose in her neck to immerse himself in her cinnamon scent before falling into a slumber as deep as the sea is wide.

In the morning, he is alone once more, although a table of bread, butter, and fruit is set out in the antechamber. A maid enters to do something or other, and when he inquires as to the whereabouts of his lady, the girl tells him she rose to attend to Laena and the household duties. She also says Baela asked to be informed when he awoke, which brings a smile unbidden to his face. _She can only love me in her way._

“Fetch me hot water and a shaving tub,” he instructs her, “and tell my wife I await her.” He breaks his fast quickly, and the tub is brought for him. Now that he looks outside, he can see the sun is near it’s zenith and that the entire morning has escaped him, which it never did on the water. He supposes he needed the rest.

When the tub is brought, Alyn stands shirtless in front of the washroom mirror and soaks his razor while lathering bath foam on the thick beard he has grown. Lady Larra’s maid had cut all their hair prior to arriving at King’s Landing lest they resemble rugged pirates, but his beard was untouched. He only shaved when a journey was done, and his voyage did not come to an end until the familiar sounds and sights of High Tide’s port entered his view.

Peering into the mirror, another familiar sight comes into his view, this one ever more enchanting. Baela, wrapped in a dress of Velaryon seagreen lacking any sleeves or straps, emphasizing how her body has changed since birth. When he left, she was barely even pregnant—he vows to be here for the next one. He’s heard it said a woman round with child is the sweetest vision for the man who put it there, and he _wants that._ He always has.

“Baela,” he whispers and shudders when she tentatively places a hand on his shoulder. Their eyes meet in the polished glass and she seems nervous, which was unlike her. Was it him who made her nervous? He never had before. Likelier than not this distance between them was his fault somehow. If she lets him take her to bed now, he’ll do away with all that.

They had a quick fuck the day of his return, clothes only removed enough to allow him to press her against a wall and have her at an excruciating pace. She gasped and whimpered like she was a maid all over again, and it would be generous to say he lasted two dozen strokes before spilling. 

In his defense, he hadn’t been inside a woman since he last saw her. The Princess Aliandra had offered to revive their affair the first night he landed in Sunspear, rucked up her skirts and fondled her generous thighs in front of him while the heat of the desert invaded the room through thin red curtains. There was a time that the sight of her undone was irresistible, but knowing that Baela was leagues away suffering to carry his child, it suddenly seemed unbearably uncouth to fuck another woman. He’d kissed her forehead and left the room, departing Dorne as quickly as he could manage. 

_So I could come back to you_ , he thinks to himself as she pushes him to sit in the chair and takes the bowl of once-boiling water closer to her.

Then she straddles his lap, wetting the razor and bringing it to his skin soundlessly.

He doesn’t open his mouth for a healthy fear his throat will be slit, but he relaxes as well as he is able and rests his hands on her waist to keep her balanced. He tries to close his eyes but the sight of Baela’s tongue bit between her teeth as she concentrates is too adorable to look away from. When she’s nearly done and goes to wet the razor once more, he steals a kiss. She smiles despite her brow furrowing, as if she didn’t wish to encourage him. 

There is something about her. It is not unusual for her to be reticent with her true emotions, always preferring to fight or fuck it out—to a degree he is accustomed to that. Nonetheless it concerns him.

“Baela,” he says, trying for stern, but she places a finger to his lips and the razor back against his skin, so he is forced to stay quiet. When she finishes she tosses the razor in the water and wets a towel, erasing the remnants of lather and hair on his newly clean shaven face. She grabs the oil, dripping it onto her hands and making circles on his dry skin until she is satisfied.

When that’s over, she rests her warm hands on his bare stomach and leans her head onto his collarbone, the rest of her stiff. He guides her the rest of the way with a hand spread across the small of her back, and when she wraps her arms around him he does the same.

They sit in the afternoon light, embracing silently. The sounds of the castle, the rustling of servants and pages and whoever else, the cries of the gulls outside, all of them are powerless in the face of this. He closes his eyes and relishes the sensation of her small body against his, the comfort a wife alone can give.

“Baela,” he murmurs softly against her ear. She’s shaking, he suddenly realizes. _Willful woman, you need not hide that you missed me._

She does not bother to reply. He understands words are not her strong suit, but when he lifts up she wraps herself around him like an octopus, as if she does not wish to let go. He carries her to their bed and lays her down, leaning on top of her in a way that keeps his weight off. Even after a birth he finds her body slim and lithe, which is his preference, and he gently undoes the laces on the back of her gown to take it off her. She arches her back to allow him, and he pulls it off slowly, savoring every stripe of skin exposed. The scars from her battle on Moondancer’s back or her childhood training yard skirmishes, the stretches on her hips from carrying Laena, her shapely legs. No other woman looks like this—not even Lady Rhaena, for she did not have the marks of a warrior that Baela did, and those are beyond beautiful to Alyn.

_I never saw anything half so glorious, so brave and so mad as you lying with your head on a block while spitting righteous fury at the pretender to the throne. Who other than you boasts such strength?_

He climbs back up to kiss her mouth, which she allows and does not stop him this time. They kiss languidly as he runs his hands up and down her supple flesh, parting her thighs and glancing over her to ensure she is wet and ready. He is dismayed to feel she isn’t, so he resolves to rectify that. 

It’s when he is ghosting his breath over the small mountains of her breasts that she finally speaks. “Be gentle this time,” she says in the quiet voice of a mouse.

He thinks she is referencing the last time, in King’s Landing, and he feels shame if he hurt her. He was desperate to be with her, but if she was in pain he should have known. “Do the birthing effects linger?” he asks as he licks her nipple softly.

“No,” she admits, and he’s relieved, “I just want you to touch me like I’m your wife.”

“You are my wife,” he responds, dipping his face in the valley between.

“Touch me like you love me, then.”

“I do love you,” he’s at her stomach now, which is halfway soft and halfway muscled.

“Touch me like I’m something precious.”

“You are something precious,” he blows lightly at the place of pleasure above her center. She breathes out and spreads her legs wider. He puts his jaw to work, tracing her slowly, taking his time. She becomes wet quickly and even though he wished to make her peak in that position, he goes when she urges him up her body.

“Touch me like you don’t want to let me go.”

“Baela,” he says, fixing her legs high up on his waist and teasing her with slow circles of his hips. “Baela,” he repeats, nudging at her scrunched up face. Eventually she opens her eyes, and he begins his breach into her welcoming body, going slowly so she will be comfortable.

“You are my wife. I love you. You are precious. And I will never, _never_ let you go.” There are tears in her eyes then, but she brings him close and hikes her leg up further so he sinks deeper within her.

They make love like true lovers do, tenderly with sweet sounds indistinguishably coming from both of them, the melody of intimacy so delicious. The rocking of their bed is akin to the rocking of the sea, the impossible pleasure of each other’s bodies better than unfurling a sail and catching just the right wind. _This_ is what he needs to truly come home. Without her, he’s lost.

The arch in her back begins to seem painful, every muscle in her frame strung like a bow. She nears her end, the pleas for him to grind against her at the end of each thrust becoming more desperate, and he wishes to make her come apart but he isn’t ready yet—he needs a little more from her, otherwise the satisfaction will remain incomplete.

“Say it, Baela,” he grunts, slowing to a torturous pace that makes her sob, “come now, you know what it is I need. Say it. Tell me.” Her eyes are shut so tight, her bottom lip almost ripping with how savagely she bites into it. No words fall from her plump mouth and he gives a particularly hard thrust to force her attention onto him.

“Tell me you love me, Baela,” he hears himself practically beg, his hands clasped around her wrists. She is tight as a knot around him, and the pleasure is spreading so quickly he cannot hold on much longer. He needs to hear it _now_.

She breaks a moment before he loses control, opening her eyes wide and wailing, “I love you Alyn, I love you, I love you.” She repeats the words over and over, adrift and mad as he quickens his pace. She cants her hips up towards him to best elongate the sensation that crashes like waves over her, silently screaming and bringing their mouths together to mindlessly kiss one another.

He groans and drops his head to her shoulder, panting. He thinks to roll off of her, but he senses that she wishes for him to remain close, so he lays his head lightly on her chest and allows her to play with his hair.

After the sweat has dried on their bodies and she is doing little more than petting him weakly, Alyn speaks again. 

“Baela,” he mouths lovingly, no expectation in his voice, simply worshipping her name.

“Alyn,” she sighs, and his smile stretches out against her skin.

“Yes, wife?” he asks, lifting his head to kiss her chastely. She accepts it readily enough.

“A wife among your other women,” she grumbles, and some of the tension in her shoulders has returned from before. Nobody should have such tense shoulders after being fucked so well, Alyn knows that much.

“The only other woman I have is the sea.” He rolls them over so Baela is on top, for he is tired of holding himself up.

“And the other one,” she does not let it go, “do not lie while your cock remains inside of me.” _So this is what was bothering her._ Before he left they had quarreled, her rage at the thought that he would return to his Dornish lover. She might as well have taken a vow of silence for all she ignored him during the day. But in the night, it was a different matter, for she would curl up in his arms and allow him to soothe her wordlessly, vulnerable with her actions in a manner she could never be with her speech. Such was Baela’s way and some men would have found it improper that he was the one who sought to settle their grievances each and every time they fought. The war had taught him to take nothing for granted—there was much he wished he could have said to Addam, but he had said it all to a gravestone instead. 

“No,” he shakes his head, “no other one. I will not tell you false, my lady, she did offer herself to me. But I did not accept her terms.”

“This time,” she says, voice small.

“This time,” he admits. He does not ever lie to his family.

She sits up, meeting his gaze from above. Gloriously naked and unashamed, she is his goddess on the land. Even the Princess Aliandra, as sensual as she might be, could not stir his heart as his true woman does.

“Fine,” she judges imperiously, closing the matter. He smiles up at her. 

They go to visit Laena, who is wide awake in her crib next to her dragon egg that appears to glow from within, as if the creature was already breathing fire in there. His daughter takes to him well, and when she vomits her meal onto his doublet he casts it off and continues regaling her with stories of his journey. Baela takes some correspondence nearby, writing little letters and issuing instructions to different servants who come and go. 

Like him, she runs a tight ship. The wetnurse comes to take his little girl for feeding, and he pouts disappointedly that Baela does not offer the babe her own breast. She would name him a pervert but he simply wishes to see it, as curious as they come. 

“Baela,” he calls to gain her attention. He holds out his arms and she comes to take a seat on his lap, enabling him to brush the hair from her shoulder and rest his head there.

“I forgot to say,” she speaks suddenly, as if the thought had just struck her. “I forgot to say welcome home.”

He kisses the top of her shoulder, the divot where it becomes her neck. “I am home when I am with you, Baela.” She scoffs, and he rocks them back and forth. They remain so, entangled in the fading afternoon and lost in the maze of their own minds.

“What are you thinking about?” he wonders aloud, admiring her features.

She smiles shyly. “You, I suppose. How pleased I am that you came back.”

He meets her in a kiss. “I will always come back to you. As long as you will have me, as long as you want me, I will return. For without you, there is nothing to return to.”


	2. then you beg

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His journey ends long before he undertakes his final voyage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so alyn is extremely skeevy for impregnating elaena considering their age difference, familial ties, and just her general situation, and in asoiaf there's a lot of the ~redemption thru love~ trope happening (jaime, sandor, etc). personally i disagree and think it's a cheap narrative device. however i believe baela to be a different breed than a lot of the women of her time, and wanted to explore alyn facing actual consequences for his predatory behavior from a woman sticking up for another woman.

Every man has his luck. Some enough to swim in, some an ocean full, and some others not hardly enough to parch their throat. The Gods were kind and cruel as the wind, as the waters, as any woman. 

He knows that much, for he has known many women. The first years of his life were spent underfoot his mother, the bold and bawdy Marilda who could have cracked a mast in half with how hard her head was. He supposes he got that from her. Addam hadn’t been that way, more of Corlys Velaryon in his veins than Alyn could claim. 

Then there was the sea, the woman before women, who in cycles soothed and sought to drag him to her depths. The fickleness of her nature had shaped him, and when his heart hammered at the same rhythm as hers, he needed no other.

When he was on land, it was a different story. He is a man of near fifty, skin weathered and permanently bronzed, silver hair intertwined with salt and pepper, but some things were never quite outgrown.

And now, his wife would not even look at him.

“Baela,” he sighs wearily. There was an ache in his bones that creaked like the floorboards on _Mouse_ , the cog so worn from sailing and repairs that it would never go silent again. Neither would his knees.

She sits scribbling out a letter and ignoring him.

It has been days of this. The crew grows impatient. “For all the years and children between us, wife of mine, you will look at me,” he commands stonily, and miraculously, she places down her pen.

“Yes?” she replies, turning her vacant lilac eyes to him. His heart sinks.

“I mean to set sail on the morrow.”

“Then do so.”

“Is that all you have to say to me?” he pushes. They have always fought, and they have always returned to kindness afterwards. So he must make her fight.

“Yes,” she says, and picks up her pen once more.

He stands to his full height and walks up behind her, grabbing the pen away and turning her towards him, leaning over with a hand on each chair aim. “No, Baela. No.”

She laughs bitterly. _He hates that noise._ “Then what else? You will go, you will come, so you have always done and will always do. It matters naught.”

“And for that you have not spoken a word to me for all this time,” he rebuts, increasingly frustrated. Time has not made her any better at speaking her feelings, “for that the chambers we have shared for _thirty years_ are barred to me?”

She interrupts him, standing and putting space between them. “What use have you for my chambers? You have the bed of another, as you have always. Do not seek to fight me, I am tired and old and wish for no more of the conflict you ceaselessly bring me.”

Baela’s jealousy is not new to him. He has not feared her wrath for many years, the peace between them earned through the ages. An unfamiliar twinge of apprehension thrums through his body, though.

“You are as much a warrior in this marriage as I am, wife. That is our way. Do not pretend otherwise, that you would have preferred a more docile man. There is only me for you.”

“Fine,” she dismisses, the fight dissipating, “I am too wild, I surpass my place, no other man could have survived me. Fine, if that is all you wish to hear then I agree. So there, husband, you are right and you have won.”

“Won?” he says aghast. “What is there to win between us? You are my wife and all I have is shared with you.”

“Even your shame,” she spits, and turns away. He wishes to touch her but he feels it would only insult her.

 _His shame._ His shaming of her. His shaming of the girl Princess.

_"Take me on the sea, nuncle," Princess Elaena had implored him, letting free the two color hair that finally had the opportunity to grow long. “I missed it all this time.” He took her sailing day after day, just the two of them, a lonely girl and an old man with too much heart and not enough sense. When she kissed him, shy and exploring, he could not help but take her in his arms._

He did not mean to ruin her. Only to give her goodness when she had feasted on cruelty for so long, and to take some of her innocence for himself.

When Laena, his little Laena, came to court alongside her husband to swear fealty with her third child cradled in her arms, she had merely had to look at him with her mother’s eyes and he sought this new King’s permission for Driftmark, where his fleet was gathering. His daughter did not rage at him for hers was a softer personality than any of her recent ancestors, but the hurt blooming on her face was plain to see.

_"Will you not say goodbye to me, nuncle?" she came to him in the gardens to ask, cheeks pink with love. “I will return,” he promised, for he was weak to the sight of her small rounded belly._

_When he steered his way to High Tide, he felt as if he was waking from a dream._

Baela already knew, of course. No mother and daughter wrote to each other more than his wife and firstborn did. And when he went to their bed, which he slept in even when she filled it with words that may as well have been arrows, he found it closed to him.

“The shame is not yours,” he insists, saddened that she would feel it is. Distance has given him perspective, and although he is hardly a political mind even he knows that he must resign his post if he wishes to have any rest in this castle again.

She shakes her head. “Is it not? It is always my shame. And for what purpose? No sooner have I outlived one scandal than there is another. No sooner have I mourned one than I lose another.”

Who has Baela lost? Not him; never him. 

“You have not lost me,” he assures her, but she looks upon him as if he has grown another head.

“You? I do not even know what sort of man would do as you did,” she finally starts yelling. “If I have lost you, I have lost nothing, for never was your nature clear to me until I heard of the babe you put in my _niece_ , my baby brother’s daughter. All these years I have kept a snake in my bed.” She breathes deeply with the effort even as he remains stiller than a pond's surface.

She speaks again with sorrow. “It will not please me if I ever see you again. I would be free of your many faces, your false words. Enough, Alyn. Leave me my peace.”

He searches for any indication that her words come from hurt, that they are barbs designed to push him away and were not bred in her heart of hearts. Nobody knows her anger better than he, and there is nothing false in her face.

_She means for me to leave and not return. She wishes it more than anything else._

For a time, he cannot muster a response. They simply exist together, him gawking and her collapsed into her seat.

“Ever since I met you, I have felt that we knew one another,” he says quietly, winded. Hopeless. “When you came to me shivering and desperate that night on Driftmark, I recall thinking, _finally._ Out of all of this, there might at last be something good. When you placed Laena in my arms...you gave me something I never thought to have again. A family of my own.”

“You threw it away at every chance,” she whispers miserably. “Even then, I loved you so long.”

He closes his eyes. Saltwater rises in his cheeks. He sheds no tears, for Corlys Velaryon once smacked him across the face when he wept for Addam and he learned that lesson well. “Do you still?”

“What does it matter,” she barks incredulously, but he senses she is not being cruel no matter how small he feels in the face of her reaction. He thought himself too old to have such emotions anymore but it would appear one never outgrows wishing for their wife’s care and respect.

“It matters,” is all he says.

She gives him a sober look. “Daenaera was a child when she came to us. You played with her, the games of babes, hiding and seeking, sneaking her candies. She loved you. And you dishonored her little girl, Alyn. Sweet young Elaena, the girl we sent a rocking horse upon her birth.” 

Her words are weighty. They pile heavy upon his shoulders.

“No, my Lord. I do not love you any longer. For you are a stranger to me.”

“You will never forgive me this betrayal,” he speaks aloud. It is more a statement than a question. She does not reply. _Perhaps, in our youth she might have found it within herself to do so. But now she desires peace, and I am a man of battle. Of destruction. Like the ocean, I cannot be just one thing._

“Then there is nothing left for me,” he despairs, and when he raises his head their eyes meet. Before him sits Baela, who has been a Princess and a betrothed and a Lady and an heir, but always simply Baela to him. Even with lines across her face, the old scars buried in her skin, her greying hair swept to one shoulder, he still finds her beautiful. How not? Those lines were formed by a thousand and one laughs they have shared, those scars full of words he has traced into them, that hair accustomed to his fingers running through it all.

And she looks at him and sees...nothing, he supposes. She recognizes no part of him, features familiar but no more than that. He wishes he were a man strong enough to bear her indifferent gaze, that she might remain in his, but he is not. 

He rises. He kisses her, for he cannot resist doing so, and makes his way gone. He sets sail the next day as he promised, and she does not see him off as she had for every journey before. _There goes my luck,_ he thinks detachedly, for he has already made his peace.

No sailor should step one boot on a ship unless they expect to return, unless they will do everything in their power to come back from whence they sail. His mother taught him that. He watches the two ravens he sent to his son and his daughter fly and gives the command to set off.

Every man has his luck, his moment in which he shines in the sun and the days are glorious. But Alyn has been to shores all over the Essos, and however many the hours of the light, the sun always sets. So it has set on him. He doesn’t fight it this time, just mouths his last words to the darkness and allows the current to close his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> my hc is that alyn and baela spent the second half of the war together and so their rship is very much one of soothing and understanding. they're both also very independent and i like that vibe so i wanted to write a lil about them.


End file.
